Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

Everyone,

I think this is going in the wrong direction. I have just skim-read
this thread but I have the impression that the basic assumption seems to
be "tagging votes are an important core element of how we work at OSM,
so we must increase participation, make tagging votes more widely known,
and translate proposals so that everyone can participate".

It is however not true that tagging votes are an important core element
of how we work; we can do perfectly fine without. Even if certain things
were tagged differently in different parts of the word, that would not
break OpenStreetMap.

Tagging votes are not a big and important thing; in my opinion, they are
not even important enough to warrant a posting to a national-language
mailing list that says "please vote" (hello Bryce). Votes are neither
binding (for editors or renderers), nor are they final. If a vote were
held on something and it later turns out that a much larger proportion
of people than actually participated in the vote dislike the outcome,
then the vote is practically void.

A democratic vote might be a good tool for some things; it is not the
proper tool to decide on tagging in OpenStreetMap. The outcome of a vote
should really be phrased:

"The following 35 people think that this proposal is a good idea and
would recommend using it"

rather than

"This proposal has been accepted"

because the latter really affords the whole process much more relevance
than it actually has.

So please, don't go over board here by trying to force-involve every
mapper in tag votes; they're simply not important enough, and they
*should not be*. Don't try to make them important, lasting, or binding.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

On 18/03/2015 6:21 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Everyone,
>
> The outcome of a vote
> should really be phrased:
>
> "The following 35 people think that this proposal is a good idea and
> would recommend using it"
>
> rather than
>
> "This proposal has been accepted"
>
> because the latter really affords the whole process much more relevance
> than it actually has.

Agree. But I'd resist naming the people, something like this?

"This key:value was supported by 30 people on the OSM tagging group."

? As the proposal page remains on the wiki and can be seen by all there is no point in repeating the names.
The number of approval votes gives some idea of the value of the statement.

Unfortunately the status value remains as 'approved'.
Perhaps 'recommended' or 'endorsed' for the status? Even add the number there 'endorsed by 30'? .. 'supported' may be taken as being rendered so I'd not use that.

-------------------------
If 'we' want increased participation .. 'we' need to encourage membership.
And encourage new discussions on tags and tagging. No mater how 'inexperienced" some view the new member.

As the radius of knowledge increases the circumference of ignorance expands.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

A
separate debate is how to increase voting participation.
making pending votes more visible in the editing tools
could help.

Just some idea:Translate the proposal in German, French, Spanish and
Russian, ... (the largest communities outside the English
speaking countries)

Let people vote and discuss in
their own language. Sum up the votes from the different
pages.

It is a good idea. The main problem is that an issue in one place may have
been resoled in another. So there may need to be some cross flow
between the discussions when required/requested?The secondary issue is the translation. I'm afraid I'd be
using one of those computer translators to do it .. thus there
will be some amusement .. not a bad thing .. it can be cleaned up
once done.

Not everyone is willing/capable to
discuss in a foreign language.

Yep. And thus OSM misses out on probably some very good
ideas. And this may well encourage others to make more tags.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

Just some idea:Translate the proposal in German, French, Spanish and Russian, ... (the largest communities outside the English speaking countries)

Let people vote and discuss in their own language. Sum up the votes from the different pages.

-1, I doubt this will work, and I think this creates too much overhead. First I believe it is not feasible, look how many pages for the approved tags are actually translated. Of course you can have (and there is already) discussion in different languages, but this doesn't have to be in the wiki (a wiki is generally not a good platform to discuss stuff, IMHO). Secondly I think that this will lead to more confusion because people will vote on different stuff (a translation is always a translation and might bear language intrinsic limitations, proposals get changed in the time until voting, this is also desirable, but translations would have to keep up, something we don't even achieve for the definition pages of well established and frequently used "important" tags).

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

"The following 35 people think that this proposal is a good idea and
would recommend using it"

rather than

"This proposal has been accepted"

because the latter really affords the whole process much more relevance
than it actually has.

Agree. But I'd resist naming the people

actually I think naming the people is important, because this way you can decide if this has been looked through by someone you have confidence in. This is a way people can get reputation and others can decide based on their preferences and the reputation the people that voted have gained or lost from their personal point of view. If this was anonymous the naked number would be much less useful.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

I said few years ago that "vote" should be replaced by "opinion poll".
This hasn't change in my view,

> It is however not true that tagging votes are an important core element
> of how we work; we can do perfectly fine without.

Yes and no. It is not a core element but getting feedbacks before
formalising a new tag is better than nothing even locally (like
imports, no ?). But it is true that a tag "approved in the wiki"
doesn't avoid bad tags. See the endless discussions around
"smoothness" or "highway=ford" on ways or the use of abstruse
abbreviations for the non-natives like "ngo", "aed" or "asl".

> Even if certain things
> were tagged differently in different parts of the word, that would not
> break OpenStreetMap.

Only a fraction of us is thinking like this. Using 2, 3 or 10
different tags for the exact same thing is surely providing a job for
OSM consultants but is creating unnecessarily complexity for
contributors and data consumers. Wikipedia wouldn't accept two
articles on the exact same topic. It is our responsibility to keep the
project usable, even for new data consumers.

> "The following 35 people think that this proposal is a good idea and
> would recommend using it"
> rather than
> "This proposal has been accepted"

True.

> So please, don't go over board here by trying to force-involve every
> mapper in tag votes; they're simply not important enough, and they
> *should not be*. Don't try to make them important, lasting, or binding.

But the wiki is currently giving the impression that the "vote
process" is formal and important. So something has to be changed.

Btw, I don't think that translations will help. Some proposals don't
have many feedbacks simply because the interest is not shared by a
large group.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

the use of abstruse
abbreviations for the non-natives like "ngo", "aed" or "asl".

+1

> Even if certain things
> were tagged differently in different parts of the word, that would not
> break OpenStreetMap.

Only a fraction of us is thinking like this. Using 2, 3 or 10
different tags for the exact same thing is surely providing a job for
OSM consultants but is creating unnecessarily complexity for
contributors and data consumers.

this is only true if they want to have coverage of different parts of the world or map in different parts of the world, because it seems as if Fred asumed that inside these "parts" the tags would have been used consistently. Generally, having several tags meaning the same thing is not a problem, using the same tag with different meanings is a problem.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

"The following 35 people think that this proposal is a good idea and
would recommend using it"

rather than

"This proposal has been accepted"

+1 (thousand)

I already decided some time ago, that I will not put any of my proposal up for voting any more, but instead allow mappers to add themselves to a list of "supporters". This feels much more osm-ish to me.

If you like a proposal, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it - and preferable come up with something better.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

On 18 March 2015 at 08:21, Frederik Ramm <[hidden email]> wrote:
> So please, don't go over board here by trying to force-involve every
> mapper in tag votes; they're simply not important enough, and they
> *should not be*. Don't try to make them important, lasting, or binding.

+1

A thought, how difficult would it be to include in the wiki-page how
many different mappers have actually used a specific tag. Perhaps via
TagInfo.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

somehow they are lasting. The definition that gets voted is typically the same that will be in use for some time. Then there will be objects in the database which are tagged according to that definition, and trying to change the definition will likely provoke resistance by those that have been using the old definition. Only in a few cases there will be so many problems that people will happily change what is there.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

A thought, how difficult would it be to include in the wiki-page how
many different mappers have actually used a specific tag. Perhaps via
TagInfo.

This in fact would be a very helpful information! Although - please everyone correct me if I'm wrong - the numbers from taginfo are not what we want: as far as I know, taginfo shows the number of mappers, that added or changed(!) an object with a given tag. Much more meaningful would be the number of mappers, that actually added a specific tag. This is much harder to determine and even this number would be biased, because of way-splits.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

Am 18.03.2015 um 12:55 schrieb Martin Vonwald:

> 2015-03-18 12:47 GMT+01:00 Markus Lindholm <[hidden email]>:
>
>> A thought, how difficult would it be to include in the wiki-page how
>> many different mappers have actually used a specific tag. Perhaps via
>> TagInfo.
>>
>
>
> This in fact would be a very helpful information! Although - please
> everyone correct me if I'm wrong - the numbers from taginfo are not what we
> want: as far as I know, taginfo shows the number of mappers, that added or
> changed(!) an object with a given tag. Much more meaningful would be the
> number of mappers, that actually added a specific tag. This is much harder
> to determine and even this number would be biased, because of way-splits.

Exactly, you need to use more of the history, as how do you tread
replaced objects like node -> area ?

The first author of an object does not have to be the one who introduced
the tag.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

> On 18/03/2015 5:02 PM, Marc Gemis wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Bryce Nesbitt <[hidden email]>> <mailto:[hidden email]>>wrote:
>>
>> A separate debate is how to increase voting participation. making
>> pending votes more visible in the editing tools could help.
>>
>>
>> Just some idea:
>> Translate the proposal in German, French, Spanish and Russian, ...
>> (the largest communities outside the English speaking countries)
>> Let people vote and discuss in their own language. Sum up the votes
>> from the different pages.

-1

> It is a good idea.
> The main problem is that an issue in one place may have been resoled in
> another. So there may need to be some cross flow between the discussions
> when required/requested?
>
> The secondary issue is the translation. I'm afraid I'd be using one of
> those computer translators to do it .. thus there will be some amusement
> .. not a bad thing .. it can be cleaned up once done.

+1

>> Not everyone is willing/capable to discuss in a foreign language.
>
> Yep. And thus OSM misses out on probably some very good ideas.
> And this may well encourage others to make more tags.

So, we need some mediators to help to break the language barrier. People
willing to help with English or even take over ideas and make proposals.

I could understand if a proposal is first written in a language
different than English and later translated into English but the wiki
itself needs lots of work on much more important pages than translating
proposals in multiple languages.

One thing for creators of proposals which are not voted on and everybody
else would be to make the transfer to an official wiki page once the tag
is in major use. Then translation can start.

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

> Am 18.03.2015 um 12:55 schrieb Martin Vonwald:
>> 2015-03-18 12:47 GMT+01:00 Markus Lindholm <[hidden email]>:
>>
>>> A thought, how difficult would it be to include in the wiki-page how
>>> many different mappers have actually used a specific tag. Perhaps via
>>> TagInfo.
>>
>> This in fact would be a very helpful information! Although - please
>> everyone correct me if I'm wrong - the numbers from taginfo are not what we
>> want: as far as I know, taginfo shows the number of mappers, that added or
>> changed(!) an object with a given tag. Much more meaningful would be the
>> number of mappers, that actually added a specific tag. This is much harder
>> to determine and even this number would be biased, because of way-splits.
>
> Exactly, you need to use more of the history, as how do you tread
> replaced objects like node -> area ?

Re: Increasing voting participation (Was Accepted or rejected?)

It is however not true that tagging votes are an important core element
of how we work; we can do perfectly fine without. Even if certain things
were tagged differently in different parts of the word, that would not
break OpenStreetMap.

-1

I disagree with the sentiment. The value of the vote itself is minimal.

But the value of the voting process is very high. Broad perspectives during the draft/rfc and voting phase

can vastly improve tagging, and set a pattern others will follow.

---

Even really bad tagging ideas (such as denotation="cluster") get widely copied. The initial patterns set matter, such as cow tracks lead to dirt roads, lead to railways, then settlements and main streets.